MANUAL DIGITAL MARKETING

Chapter: 4 Search Engine Optimization (16 Hours)

Objective: After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

 Define Search Engine.

 Discuss Search Engine Optimization.
 Demonstrate Technical SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
 Demonstrate On-Page Optimization.
 Demonstrate Off- Optimization.

Duration: Theoretical: 6 hours. Practical: 10 hours.

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4.1 Search Engine – An Overview

Search Engine is a service that enables the Internet users to search for content through
the World Wide Web. The Search Engine works when the searcher or user puts the
keywords or any keyword phrase into the search engine and hit ‘Search’ to receive the list of web page
result. The list of content that returns via a search engine to the user is known as Search Engine Result
Page (SERP).

As a terminology, a Search Engine is a Software Program or script available through the Internet that
searches for documents and finds for keywords and return the results of any files having those
keyword. Currently, there include hundreds of search engines on the web, each having its own abilities
and features.

How to Access a Search Engine?

A Search Engine is easy to access through a browser on the computer, smartphone, tablet, or any
other computer-operated device. In general, we visit the search engine home page to find answer for
our search query. For example we use: www.google.com

How a Search Engine Works?

Search engine has two major functions, mainly building an index and crawling, which gives the search
users a ranked list in a numeric numbered list.

Commonly, the Search Engine displays the search results as per their level of importance. However,
this importance is determined by algorithm of the particular Search Engine. Currently, the most
important and popular search engine ruling on the web is, Google. Similarly, like other Search Engines,
Google has its own algorithm, which helps to filter the search query as per the level of importance.

Apart from the Search Engines, let’s learn few more terminologies associated with the working of
Search Engine Optimization:

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Internet

An Internet is a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication

facilities. It connects a computer to any other computer anywhere in the world through the router and
servers.

URL

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address of a resource on the internet. The URL explains the
location of a resource as well as the protocol used to access it.

A URL includes the protocol (HTTP), the domain name (or IP address), and the additional path
information (folder/file). Example: http://www.website.com

Browser

A Web Browser is a software program, which allows a user to locate, access, and display web pages.
This program makes it possible for you to read information on the internet. Example: Mozilla Firefox,
Google Chrome, Safari.

Google Chrome Safari Mozilla Firefox

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4.2 Understanding Search Engine Optimization

Definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality
of traffic to your website through the organic search result.

SEO has the set rules, which is followed by website owners to optimize their website for better search
engine ranking.

SEO is basically a strategy and a strong search engine technique that helps increase the number of
visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search engine.

In a simple term, SEO is an effective marketing strategy carried out on the web in an organic manner.

Objectives of Search Engine Optimization: The most predominant objectives of Search Engine
Optimization are:

 Generate high website traffic.

 Increase website ranking.
 Generate Online Sales.
 Improves Website branding.

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4.3 Technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Website Analysis

Definition: Website analysis is the process of

analyzing the entire website and how well it is
performing on the search engine.

Analyzing the website results in determining all the SEO

errors which are required to fix the lost efficiency of the
website, and help the website run on the search engine
perfectly as before.

Additionally, it helps to understand the SEO services

that the website lacks and therefore demands right away.

Here are the few ways to analyze the website. And they are:

1. Meta Tag: Meta tag analysis is the assessing of Meta Tags which are Meta Title and Meta
Description. To analyze the Meta Tags, you can search for the tags in the HTML code.

Step: Open the Website ‘Home Page.’ To view the HTML code, right click your mouse and select the
‘View Source’ or ‘View Page Source.’ This will open the HTML page code, where searching for the
<title> and <description> one after another in the search field, will highlight the complete Page Title
and Description.

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Optimizing Meta Tags using plugin: Meta tags can be added to the website even with the use of
plugins, if the website is built using WordPress platform. Optimizing Meta Tags in WordPress requires
to follow the following steps apart from adding ‘Yoast’ plugin and accessing to the WordPress admin.
Here are the mentioned steps:

Step 1. Enabling Advanced Settings in SEO Yoast

To enable advanced settings, follow the steps:

SEO > Dashboard > Features > Advanced settings pages heading> Enable

Step 2. Adding Meta Title

To add a Meta Title to the web page, follow the steps:

Posts > All Posts > Select the post you want to add Meta Tags.

Once the post is open, scroll down to the section named as Yoast SEO. In this section, a snippet of
Meta Title will be shown as gets displayed in the search engine. Clicking on the Edit Snippet will open
a field title as SEO Title, where you need to add the Meta Title of the page.

Step 3. Adding Meta Description

The same section allows to add Meta Description as the Meta Title. Under the SEO Title field, there
are two additional fields titled as Meta description, wherein you need to add a relevant Meta
Description. Once you are done, click Close Snippet editor, and save changes by pressing Update
button.

Step 4: Adding Keyword

Meta Keywords need to be enabled manually in Yoast SEO. To enable Meta Keywords, follow the
given steps:

SEO > Title & Meta > Other Tab

In this section, you will find Use Meta Keywords tag. Enabling and saving it will allow you to add
Meta Keywords. Following it, select your specific webpage or post from the Posts > All Posts
options.

In the Yoast SEO section, and right under the snippet preview, check the Meta Keywords field, where
you need to add the multiple relevant keywords one after another using commas.

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2. Robots.txt: The robots.txt is a simple text file placed the website server, which informs the web
crawler like Googlebot whether they should access a file or not.

Use Robots.txt, if
 You wish to control how the search engine spiders see and interact with the website.
 You wish the search engines to ignore any duplicate web page on the website.
 You don’t want search engines to index your internal search results pages.
 You don’t want search engines to index certain areas of your website or a whole website.
 You don’t want search engines to index certain files on your website (images, PDFs, etc.).
 You want to tell search engines where your sitemap is located.
How to Create a Robot.txt file?
A robots.txt file consists of one or more blocks of rules, each beginning with a User-agent line that
specifies the target of the rules.
# Rule 1
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /nogooglebot/
# Rule 2
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Format and Location

 You can use Notepad to create a robots.txt file.
 The file must be named robots.txt
 Your site can have only one robots.txt file.
 The robots.txt file must be located at the root of the website host. For instance, to control
crawling on all URLs below http://www.example.com/, the robots.txt file must be located at
http://www.example.com/robots.txt. It cannot be placed in a subdirectory (for example, at
http://example.com/pages/robots.txt).

If you are not sure about how to access your website root, or need permissions to do so, contact
your web hosting service provider. If you can't access your website root, use an alternative blocking
method such as meta tags.

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Analyzing Robots.txt
In order to analyze the website’s robots.txt just type http://www.examplewebsite.com/robots.txt in
the Web Browser and press enter to open the page.

3. XML Sitemap: The Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a website. An XML sitemap
contains all important web pages of a site to help Google determine the structure of it.
Commonly, the XML Sitemap is generated using the Yoast SEO tool. However, you can analyze the
Sitemap in a Website just typing: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

4. Image Optimization: Optimizing an image is the process of delivering high quality image
maintaining the right tag, size, resolution and at the same time keeping the image size smallest
possible for easy loading.

5. Canonical Issue: The Canonical issue takes place when the 301 redirect are not properly made
in place. This defines your website can be accessed by search engines from several different URLs,
which will result in indexing your website under different URLs, and consequently it will look like a
site of duplicated content.
For Example: Let suppose you have a website http://www.example.com, and the index page is
accessed from all of the following URLs:
http://www.example.com

http://example.com

http://www.example.com/index.html

http://example.com/index.php

How to Resolve the Canonical Issue?

The widely used and most effective way to resolve the canonical issue is with a permanent 301
redirect. This is implemented in two different ways:

Redirection using .htaccess File:

 We will put the redirectional code to .htaccess file for the non-www version to www version.

 Open the .htaccess file and add the following code:

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RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond% {HTTP_HOST}
!^www.example.com $ [NC]
RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1

[L,R =301]

 Open the .htaccess file and add code with the edited URL.

To open .htaccess file: Open C-Panel File Manager  .htaccess File  Open the file in a new tab
and add the Code.

Using Google Search Console:

 Open your Google Search Console and proceed to the website dashboard which you have
added with the Google Search Console.

 Go to Website Setting.

 Next Select the display URL as www.example.com and then click on the save button to keep
the changes.

6. IP Canonicalization: The IP Canonicalization occurs when the website open with the website IP
as well as with the domain name. This duplicates the content problems in case the search engine
indexes the website with both the IP and the domain name.

How to Resolve IP Canonicalization?

In order to resolve the IP Canonicalization, you must follow the 301 redirection process using the
.htaccess file. As similar as the resolving the canonical issue, put the following code in the .htacces
file. Here’s the code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^XXX\.XXX\.XXX\.XXX

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

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7. Analysing Content Plagiarism: Content Plagiarism is an act of copying and publishing the
online content from one website to another. This results in penalizing the website and affects the
search engine ranking too.

With the Google’s latest algorithms, Google is now penalizing website having copied content and
rewarding website that has the best and unique content.

In order to check the website plagiarism, use Copyscape: https://www.copyscape.com/

8. Keyword Cannibalization: The keyword cannibalization occurs when the multiple webpages on
a website target the similar keyword. Keyword Cannibalization can ruin the SEO effort, because a
single keyword is being optimized over a multiple times.

9. 404 Error Page: The HTTP 404 Not Found Error defines that the webpage that you are trying to
reach could not be found on the server.

Many times users navigate to a wrong link which do not exist on the web server, this lead the visitor
navigate away from the original website. The 404 error page is required to design in order to hold
back the online customers to the website itself. The example of 404 page is given below with proper
company identification:

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In order to check the existence of 404 error page, type anything right after the domain name and
press enter. Example: www.example.com/hgtkjgh  press Enter.

10. Google Map:

The Google Map with a marker helps locating

the business more prominently before the
online visitors. Adding a Google Map in the
Contact Page, helps searching and reaching the
potential customers directly to your business.

10. Social Media Icons: The social media icons present in the contact page helps the online visitors
to find your business socially. Thus, adding the workable social
media icons in the website is required for every website. With
the addition of the social media icons, it becomes easier for the
website to optimize socially as well. So make sure you check
the presence of the social media icons in the website footer and
in the Contact page.

11. SEO-Friendly URL: Having an SEO-friendly URL is essential for better search engine ranking
and higher visibility on the web. Therefore, make sure that the URL does not contain any special
character like %#, rather it should be found by the appropriate name of the webpage.
Example of Bad URL:
www.example.com/home?id:12654
Example of Good URL:
www.example.com/home/web-page

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12. Google Analytic Code: The Analytics tracking code is a snippet of JavaScript that collects and
sends data to the Analytics from the Website itself. The Google Analytics code is identified as UA or
Universal Analytics.

How to check the UA Code in the Website?

 Open the Website ‘Home Page.’
 To view the UA code, right click your mouse and select the ‘View Source’ or ‘View Page
Source.’
 This will open the HTML page code, where searching for the ‘UA’ in the search field, will
highlight the Universal Analytic Code. Example: UA-XXXXXX-Y

4.4 On page Optimization

The Onpage Optimization defines all that measures that are directly associated with the website so
as to improve its position in the search engine rankings. On page SEO is the way to carry out the
process of optimization of web pages so as to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search
engines. Here are few proven processes for on page optimization:

1. Competitor Analysis

Competition Analysis is the most significant aspect of the SEO at the beginning of the campaign. It is
crucial to identify who your competitors are and the place where they exist, which helps to
understand what your target and business goal should be, and even help to identify the prevailing
gaps in your business.

The major Competitive Analysis tools used for Search Engine Optimization include:

 Alexa
 SEMRush

2. Search Engine Submission: Submitting your website to the search engine is the most popular
way to get your website enlisted for free.

How to do search engine submission?

Search engine submission is the direct submission of a website to a search engine. After generating
the Xml Sitemap, the most essential of all the thing is that your website needs to be indexed, for
which the Search Engine Submission is considered essential. It is a dominant part of

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internet marketing that helps a webmaster increase the ranking of a webpage. This helps to attract
traffic to your website by improving your online visibility. Google is the most preferred search
engine. The search engine allows you to add the website to Google Search Console by following
these steps:

Step 1. Sign in to Google Search Console.

Step 2. On your Search Console home page, select your website that you have added using ADD
PROPERTY.

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Step 3. Click on Crawl and then Sitemap present in the left hand sidebar.

Step 4. Next Click on ADD/TEST SITEMAP

Step 5. Add sitemap.xml after your displayed URL as shown in the image. And then click Submit.

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Step 6. Once you submit, you will find your website been indexed and submitted.

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4.5 Off Page Optimization

Off Page SEO defines the process, which can be used to improve the website position in the search
engine. Off Page Optimization basically takes place outside the website to drive success to the
business and help the website to rank high in the search engine result page. Here are few proven
techniques of Off Page Optimization are mentioned herein:

1. Backlinks Creation: The Backlinks are the links or the hyperlinks that a website gets from
another website. These links connect one website to another. Creating backlinks are essential
as it largely impacts the website in earning relevant web traffic, and even help increasing the
website ranking in the search engine result page. Directory Submission, Article Submission,
Guest Blogging are the few effective ways to create backlinks for a website.

2. Blog Posting: Blog or precisely weblog defines an online journal or informational website,
which acts like a platform to display the current post of the blogger or the writer on a
particular subject matter. The Blogging sites mainly allow adding or posting content about the
business or on the particular subject matter of interest. WordPress, Blogger, Medium are the
major blogging platforms that helps drive traffic to the website and provides a backlink in
return.

3. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging is the process implemented by the blog owners to increase
traffic to their website. In this process a guest blogger contributes a post to another blogger’s
website. This is one of the major content marketing strategies where a guest blogger or
writer writes, publishes and promotes a blog post on a third party website in order to endorse
their own brand, product or service. Mashable, KISSmetrics, Moz are the few eminent website
that accept guest posts.

4. Article Submission: Article submission generally defines the writing of articles relevant to
the website and submitting them to the major article directories present on the web. It is one
of the major processes of backlink creation, and helps to advertise and promote the product
and services of the website. Hubpage, ehow, and Ezine are the notable articles directories
that allow article submission.

5. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking is the most effective tool to keep your webpage
bookmarked in the social bookmarking website. It is the process by which people store,
organize, search, and manage the bookmark of the webpage. The backlink that gets

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generated by bookmarking at the social bookmarking websites are considered as quality

backlink for the website, which helps to increase the search engine ranking and traffic of the
website. Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Digg are the top bookmarking websites with high
authority.
6. Directory Submission: Directory Submission is the process of submitting the website URL on
the major web business directories so as to create quality backlink. It is one of the effective
processes to improve the search engine ranking, and generate web traffic. www.dmoz.org is
used as it is considered as the high ranked directory submission website.
7. PDF Submission: PDF submission defines the process to promote the business content as a
PDF format. The PDF will get optimized the similar manner the web page gets optimized. With
this process, you can not only able to inform your potential customers about the work you do
as well as obtain maximum visibility and backlink.
8. PPT Submission: Powerpoint Submission informs targeted customers about the business
product or service through visually attractive and well-designed presentation as slide shows. It
is a process to submit PPT relevant to the website with keywords to the high ranked PPT
submission website to attract targeted web traffic and maximize website visibility.
www.slideshare.net and www.slideworld.com are the popular sites used for PPT submission.
9. Infographics Submission: Submitting infographics is one of the most effective techniques of
content marketing as well as search engine optimization through social media websites.
Infographic is the blend of graphics with information, which attracts the customers’ attention
and helps to promote the brand and business messages. Flickr, Slideshare, and Reddit are
commonly used for Infographics submission.
10. Video Submission: With video submission, you can prepare an engaging video on your
company intro, product and services, and upload it to the major video submission website to
obtain high traffic to the website directly from the video. It creates a viral effect and even
converts the lead into customers. YouTube and Vimeo are the two most significant websites for
sharing videos.

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11.Keyword Optimization: Keyword optimization (also known as keyword research) is the

process of researching, selecting and analyzing the best keywords to drive online traffic from
search engines to your website.
Keyword optimization is a critical step in initial stages of search engine marketing, for both paid
and organic search.

Benefits of Keyword Optimization

As per the current survey, keyword optimization is regarded as one of the hardest tasks in search
engine marketing. Adding keywords in your website help Google to identify your product and services
you are promoting for. Keyword helps the Search Engine to identify what your website is all about. If
you don't choose and use keywords that your customers are searching for, your website won't get
found on the search engine.

Here are few techniques to optimize the keyword for your website:

 Drive targeted traffic to your website: To drive searchers to your site, you must optimize
for the keywords they're searching for.
 Understand user behavior: By analyzing the words that your customers use, you get an idea
of their needs and how to service those needs.
 Write effective content: By incorporating optimized keywords into your website content, you
can connect instantly with potential customers and address their needs.
 Measure traffic potential: Analyzing the popularity of keywords helps you gauge the size of
a potential online market.

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SEO KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION

When it comes to SEO, the success of your organic search efforts depends largely on how effective
you are at searching, researching, analyzing and selecting the right keywords for your website. All
other aspects of SEO depend on successful keyword optimization.

 Keyword Research: It is the most important requirement to do keyword research ahead

of writing your content in order to get the most relevant and targeted keyword for your
website.

Now, let’s have a look at how to do keyword Research. In order to make a keyword research, you
require the following:

 You need a Gmail ID.

 A Website.

Step 1: Sign in to Google AdWords.

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Step: 2 Click on the keyword field as marked here.

Step: 3 Add few relevant keywords as per your website in the marked field to generate related
keywords.

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Step: 4 After adding the relevant keywords, you can generate more keywords clicking on the ‘More
like this’ button given right after the keyword. This is how you can get to generate more keywords
from one or two keywords.

 Title Tag: Your target keywords must be included in the title tag. This is the most important
piece of content on your website, both on and off-page.
 Meta Description: Meta Description notifies what the webpage is all about. The description
is the short summary crafted within 300 characters with space and it should include relevant
keyword.
 Links: Keyword optimization should be integrated into your link building strategy. Internal
links, inbound links, breadcrumb links, navigational links should all have your top optimized
keywords. It's also important to track and manage your link text efforts.
 Content strategy: If you want to rank well and connect with searchers, you need to use
your target keywords in your content. However, over optimizing the keyword can destroy
your copy even.
 Keyword Density: Adding relevant keyword all through the content is indispensable to
bring your webpage search engine visibility whenever the targeted audience searches for
those relevant keywords. Additionally, it helps the search engine to inform what the content
is all about. But the excessive repetition and overuse of the keywords can ruin the copy.
This can even penalize the webpage from the search engine. In order to escape from this,
keep the keyword density up to 2-5%.
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 Site Structure: Keyword optimization is also critical to how you structure and organize your
website content. Not only do you need to select the right keywords, but also you need to group
them hierarchically and order the corresponding pages on your website accordingly.
 Images: Don't forget to optimize keywords in the pictures on your website. Target keywords
should be used in your image alt attribute and file names, to name a few.
 URL: Be sure to include keywords for SEO in file name. The page is about keyword optimization,
so the file name should be keyword-optimization.

Optimization of MetaTags

The Meta elements are the tags used in HTML and XHTML documents that provide structured
metadata about a Web page. They are the part of a web page’s header section, which largely
contributes to the search optimization of the website. Sometimes, Search engines display the Meta
Descriptions are displayed as the part of the search result. These tags are used for the description of
the description for your SERP listings in Google.

When these tags are used correctly, Meta Tags informs users and Google what the page is all about
and how to index it.

Few Ways to optimize the Meta Description are discussed below:

 Use relevant keywords in the Meta Description tag.

 Avoid repeating words often, and try to use multiple syntaxes of the relevant keyword.
 The Meta Description should not exceed 150 character of a single web page.
 Try using separate Meta Description tag for each page, as each page is different and will
obtain a better chance of being found with the MetaTags.

Few Ways to optimize the Meta Tag are discussed below:

 Use synonyms.
 Use unique keywords.
 Never repeat any given phrase.
 You can repeat a word any number of time, as long as each time it is a part of a different
phrase.
 Meta Tag should not exceed 60 characters.

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12. Image Optimization

Image Optimization is the process of

delivering a high-quality image in the right
format, dimension, size and resolution while at
the same time keeps the size as small as
possible.

Image Optimization involves multiple

processes like resizing, compressing the image size and even editing the image for relevancy with the
content.

Importance of Image Optimization on Website

Image Optimization is the one of the effective ways to optimize a website when website speed matters.
The key reason for image optimization is to reduce the website loading time.

Image Optimization is necessary to keep the potential customers coming to the website. In case your
customer pause more than the required time to enter a website, you are certainly going to lose visitors
in your website. This prevents the customers from visiting the website, which resultantly makes the
website underperforming.

Image of any kind draws our attention, because it is the image that adds value to the webpage and
informs the visitors what the website is all about. Due to this reason, each and every page of the
website includes image to inform the visitors about the webpage content.

For this reason, image optimization plays a very important role and it is an advantage for all websites
to build better user experience.

How to Optimize an Image for Search Engine Optimization?

Optimizing an image for SEO includes various techniques and strategies which are discussed herein:

 Discard Stock Image: It is wise enough to avoid the stock photos which all the other website
is using. It is better to use original photos over the stock photos to maintain the absolute real
image of the website.

 Use Original and High-Quality Image: It is always advisable to use high-quality and original
image to maintain the website worthiness. The more original picture you put up, it will be a
better experience for the visitors and the search engines will recognize you more for your real
uploads.

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 Have a Reason for Your Image: Images help to tell a story or simplify an idea or thing.
Viewers mainly learn things visually because an image communicates faster and directly than
the blocks of text. Images create larger impact on viewers and inform the story through its
illustration itself.

 Beware of Copyright: Use of original and real image is given more importance in SEO than
images with copywriting issues. Images from Getty, Shutterstock, DepositFiles or any other
stock photos should be avoided for copywriting issues. Images with watermarks can damage
your webpage and can end up in legal issues. So, it is advisable to find for the free image from
the web and use on the web.

 Modify Image with Tools: Image modification with image editing tools can completely
change the image. Image editing software like Adobe PhotoShop CS6 help modify the image.
This tool let you add personality, text, and uniqueness to the image. With the tool, not only
you will be able to remove watermark, but also able to customize the image as per your
requirement.

 Save File as JPEG: The file typically used for optimization is JPEG. The file format provides
the best options for maintaining the quality of the image when resized and compressed. They
work with many colors, shadows, and patterns to display a high resolution image. Moreover, it
is the most popular photo type accepted in the digital space for its ability to compressed image
in smaller form even keeping the size smaller.

 Save File as PNG: The PNG image is generally used when editing and downloading the files
from Adobe Photoshop. PNG is basically used for making the image transparent. It helps to
look the image smaller, while keeps the resolution high.

 Use an Optimal File Size without Losing Quality: Often images are the main cause of
slow loading times. Reducing the file size of the image will help the website load faster.
Always keep in mind that the overall size of the image should not be much larger than it is
actually needed. The best way to reduce the file size without affecting the quality is within
Adobe Photoshop’s ‘Save for Web’ functionality.

 Add Your Image Caption: Caption supports the image and descriptively narrates what the
image is trying to express. Do give an engaging caption relevant to the image so that readers
can relate to the image and its content.

 Naming Image for SEO: When it comes to SEO, creating a descriptive, keyword-rich file
names is very important. It is the image file that informs Google and other Search Engines to
crawl the image keeping in mind the subject matter of the image. For an example, if you sell

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chocolate, you can name your files ‘Chocolate1,’ ‘Chocolate2,’ and so on. This will help search
engines to recognize your image. Additionally, you need to edit the HTML of the image manually
for each uploaded image for accuracy. Make sure the file name should be accurate, relevant
with proper keyword.

 Writing SEO-Friendly Alt Text: Image optimization is another important aspect of Search
Engine Optimization that improves search engine ranking and helps to drive traffic to the
website. Commonly search engine bots cannot read images so they rely on Image Alt Tag to
understand what the image is all about. So, when we use our target keyword in the image alt
attribute, then it will help to optimize the post better for that specific keyword.

Example 1. Alt Tag: <img src="donut.jpg" alt="chocolate donut">

Using the correct and specific Alt Text is vital for accessibility and for user experience by helping the
search crawlers find the image immediately.

Due to this reason, writing a good Alt text needs to follow the following rules mentioned herein:

 Describe the image as correct and specific as possible.

 Keep it short and simple within 125 characters.

 Use keyword in the Alt Text, but never overdo it.

 Avoid using ‘Image of,’ ‘Picture of.’

 Use long description for complex images.

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Example 2. Alt Tag: <img src="kitten.jpg" alt="baby kitten meowing">

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13. Local Search Engine Optimization – Google Local Business Listing

A local business listing is an online profile that contains the business name, address, phone number
and other details. It is a business listing in the map that you usually see at the top or at the middle of
Google’s first page result. These listings shows up when you search for a keyword accompanied by a
specific city like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai or Chennai.

How to do a Google Business Listing?

Adding your local business to Google is free and very easy with the few steps to follow.

Here we go!

Step: 1 Go to  www.google.com/business and then click on “Start” as shown.

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Step: 2 Enter your Business name in the first field as given, and then press ‘Next.’

Step: 3 Complete the rest of the fields with your business information. Now click on ‘Next.’

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Step: 4 Locate your business.

Step: 5 Add the type of business you run.

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Step: 6 Next Add your phone number along with the Website.

Step: 7 Press ‘Continue’ to verify your business.

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Step: 8 This interface shows you’re just one step ahead. Provide your contact information to obtain
the verification code for your business. For now you can skip and press ‘Later’ to proceed further.

Step: 9 Here’s your Business Page. You can edit and even add information to keep your business
updated.

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Step: 10 Now that if you want to visit your business page for further modification, you can reach
your business page from your email account itself. Here’s the process!

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Activity.
1. Answer to the following questions.
1. What are Search Engines? Explain with examples.
2. How to access the Search Engine? Name the ways to access the Search Engine.
3. How does the Search Engine works?
4. What do you understand by Search Engine Optimization?
5. What are the objectives of Search Engine Optimization?
6. Define Image Optimization? List the importance of Image Optimization?
7. How to optimize an image for Search Engine Optimization? Describe the Alt Tag.
8. What are the two types of Search Engine Optimization?
9. What do you understand by On-Page Optimization?
10. What are the basic on-page optimization strategies?
11. What are the parameters of Meta Tag Creation?
12. What are Body Tags? Name the Body tags.
13. What are Keywords? List the techniques to optimize the keyword. Which tool is used for research
Keyword?
14. What is the Local Business Listing?
15. Define Off-Page Optimization. Explain the optimization techniques.
16. Define Website Analysis? Describe few ways to analyze the website.
17. What is Robots.txt? How to create a Robots.txt file?
18. What do you understand by Sitemap?
19. What is Canonical issue? Describe the process to resolve the canonical issue.
20. What is SEO-friendly URL? Give example.

2. Practical Exercise
1. Create a Google Business Listing to promote your local business.
2. Show the process of Search Engine Submission using a demo website.

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